A family’s journey to freedom – a tribute to my great aunt

Our Aunt “Dude”

The year 2020 has been a year of major transition for most of us. Along with everything else happening in the wider world, my family lost one of our matriarchs. Back in June, my great aunt, Melva (Fox) Papin, who we affectionately called “Aunt Dude”, died at the great age of 106. While death is never an easy pill to swallow, I am so grateful that the Lord allowed her to see so many years. 106 years was a LOT of living and I am sure she saw so much in her long, beautiful life.

Aunt Dude was my maternal grandfather’s eldest sister and the last surviving child of Charles Fox and Marie Smith. Though I had not seen her in many years, I’m privileged to have sweet memories of both she and her sister/partner-in-crime, Aunt Gladys (who gave me my first grown-up negligee as a college graduation gift because now it was time to catch a husband LOL).

Now that Aunt Dude has crossed over to join our ancestors watching over us, I want to dedicate a blog post to celebrating her memory and that of her family line. I have already written an extensive three-part series on her maternal family, the Smiths, so I’m going to share the equally fascinating ancestral journey of her paternal family, the Foxes.

From Kansas…

Melva Fox was born in Larned, Kansas in 1914. Her family – both the Smiths and the Foxes – were well known and respected around their little town. I even found a short mention in the local newspaper of 5-year-old Melva visiting with her grandfather, Mercer Lee Fox.

When she was still a little girl, the family relocated from Larned to Wichita (where my mama was born), and that is where she spent most of her youth. High school year books indicate that Aunt Dude was quite the social butterfly!

Sixty-four years before Aunt Dude’s Kansas birth, the fate of her enslaved great grandparents, Henry Fox and Elizabeth Thornton Ragland Watson (yes that was her full name!), was decided by a jury in a Richmond, Virginia courthouse. Would they be set free as the will of their former owner dictated? Or would his relatives prevail in having the will nullified and blocking the emancipation of William Ragland’s 70 enslaved people? And how did this family saga that started in Virginia, take a detour through Ohio, and end up in Kansas?

Let’s get into it!

The Fox family settled in Larned in 1886, with Henry and Elizabeth Fox moving from Pickaway, Ohio with three of their adult children — William, Malinda and Harrison. Their eldest son, Mercer, followed in 1893 with his wife Mary (Shaffer) and two children, Charles and Helena. Their son Charles was Aunt Dude’s father.

…To Ohio

Early in my genealogy journey I was told my great grandfather Charles was born in Canton, OH (which actually turned out to be KENTON, OH and made a big difference in my research! But that is a tale for another day), so I knew I needed to turn my search from Kansas to Ohio. Since Charles’ father Mercer was born in 1858, I wasn’t sure how far back I’d get since he was born before the Civil War. I found the Fox family on both the 1870 and 1880 censuses in Ohio as I hoped, but when I looked further back, I immediately came across a few details that sparked my interest.

I found them on an earlier 1860 census record in Jackson Co, OH, which confirmed Mercer and his siblings were born free in that state. Second, the census noted that both Mercer’s parents were born in Virginia, which meant they had likely been enslaved at some point. Moreover, his mother Elizabeth Watson was listed next door to her husband Henry in the household of a Nelly and Thomas Watson, who I guessed might be her parents. If true, these were my 4x great grandparents! Like any intrepid researcher I wanted to know more!

Combing the Records

Ohio is fertile ground for genealogy research with its large cache of digitally available records. Searching through available documents for Jackson county, I found several records that pertained to the family — each one was like a bread crumb that led to me to another piece of the puzzle.

First, I found an 1856 marriage record for Henry Fox and Elizabeth Watson which illustrated that they had both been in Ohio quite a few years before the 1860 census. Also, the date of their wedding shows they were both young teenagers when they married as census and obituary records indicated that Henry was born in 1840 and Elizabeth around 1838.

Then I looked for a marriage record for the couple that Elizabeth was enumerated with in 1860, and found one for that same year listing Thomas Watson marrying Nelly RAGLAND. The Ragland name was the key to unlocking more of the past.

I noticed that there were several people listed with the surname Ragland living in the immediate vicinity of the Watsons and Foxes, and all were born in Virginia. I wondered, are all of these people related? Maybe they had all been freed at the same time and journeyed to Ohio together? Turns out, my hunch was correct.

I searched the archives of the Jackson Standard newspaper to find any mentions of Raglands and found the following letter to the editor from an A.J. Perkins dated February 22, 1855. It began:

“It will be recollected that some three or four weeks since, as agent, I removed some sixty-eight emancipated slaves from the state of Virginia, who had been liberated by will of William Ragland, dec’d. Some feeble attempts were made to hinder their settlement, but the intelligent and law-abiding citizens of the community discountenanced such a course, and the negroes were permitted peaceably to occupy the lands purchased for them in this county, with money provided for that purpose by their late master…”

Rarely do you come across a record that tells you exactly what you want to know, but here it was! I figured that Nelly, at least, must have been one of these emancipated slaves. So, I took the search from Ohio to Virginia records.

…all the way to Virginia

Luckily, Virginia is also a state with a vast collection of digitally available records!

I found William Ragland listed on the 1850 federal mortality schedule, meaning he died during the previous year. Unfortunately, no record has survived of his actual will since it was published in Henrico county instead of Louisa for some reason. Many Henrico records went up in flames with the courthouse during the Civil War. But I did find the 1849 inventory of his estate that was taken shortly after his death. And there on page three, were listed both Nelly and her child “Betsy” – my 4^th and 3^rd great grandmothers!

I also came across an old book called Free Blacks of Louisa County by Janice Abercrombie, a compilation of records pertaining to free people of color before 1860. I found records that gave physical descriptions of both Nelly and Betsy along with how they obtained their freedom. Everything taken together strongly indicated that my Nelly and Elizabeth were the same Nelly and Betsey listed among Ragland’s freed slaves.

Knowing from previous research that Virginia had long since passed a law requiring emancipated slaves to leave the state within one year, my next step was to try and figure out why the emancipated Raglands stayed in Virginia nearly six years before leaving to settle in a free state as their former owner’s will stipulated.

The answer was rather obvious after I put more puzzle pieces together. William Ragland was a rich old bachelor who had just set nearly 100 slaves free. Moreover, he bequeathed roughly $20,000 to his slaves to buy land for them to settle in a free state. He not only wanted them to be free, he wanted them to prosper. Well, his relatives were absolutely appalled by his choices and immediately contested his will. And until the protracted legal process was completed, the enslaved people were forced to remain in bondage.

The case was tried twice in Louisa county with no resolution, before moving to the Circuit Court of Richmond in 1851. The Richmond trial lasted for 90 days, which many law reviews and books noted was the longest running civil case in Virginia history. Extraordinarily, after this long, drawn out trial, the jury deliberated for only half an hour before sustaining the will. The Ragland slaves would finally go free… eventually.

Despite the ruling, the Ragland slaves didn’t immediate walk free. William Ragland’s creditors still had to be paid and loose ends tied up. So the Louisa county court ruled that his slaves must remain enslaved until the finances were settled. I can’t imagine what it was like to be forced to continue working as a slave knowing you should rightfully be free.

But finally, in the summer of 1852, they were set free and ordered to be registered as free people of color.

What about Henry Fox?

A quick detour — wondering how Elizabeth’s husband factored into all this? Well, I’m not exactly sure. Though I’m certain that my 3x great grandfather Henry Fox was not among the freed Ragland slaves, I’m uncertain how he ended up in Ohio with them. I believe it’s likely that he was the Henry listed in the 1852 estate division of Dr. Meredith Fox, who owned a plantation adjacent to William Ragland and whose wife, Malinda was Ragland’s sister. My best guess is that Henry found a way to purchase his freedom from the Fox heirs in time to move away with Nelly and Elizabeth. Though they were teenagers, he and Elizabeth would be married the following year.

The slow-moving hand of justice

The Ragland’s struggle for legal freedom in Virginia turned out to be just the beginning of their fight for true freedom. As we learned earlier from the Jackson Standard article, the Raglands moved en masse to Ohio in January of 1855. I assume they received some sort of special permission to remain in Virginia for the three years it took the estate executors to find and purchase land for them in Ohio. In any case, they all settled in Jackson and Pike counties between 1855 and 1860.

Though the former slaves were finally able to settle in a free state, the lands that were purchased for them were held in a joint trust with Ragland’s executor, Robert M. Kent, acting as trustee. This meant that each person was still not considered the owner of their land. Additionally, many of them began their life in freedom indebted to the estate. They had to struggle to pay money back to the estate for “the cost of their freedom”, travel expenses, household goods, etc. They were even held responsible for taxes on lands that still weren’t legally theirs. These debts ensured they weren’t able to truly live as free people.

They never stopped fighting for what was rightfully theirs however, so the legal battle that began in Virginia, raged on in Ohio. In 1866, a man named Berry U. Jackson, the husband of one of the freed people, brought a civil suit against the executor Robert Kent asking the courts to break up the trust and give each person who had a share in William Ragland’s estate the deeds to their lands. I imagine that they all had become fed up with the terms by which they were forced to live and wanted to manage their own wealth. But with so many people having a financial interest in the estate, the court case was a quagmire that took years to sort out.

In 1872, after a decades long battle for freedom and property, all of the former Ragland slaves and their heirs were finally awarded their rightful shares and deeds to their land. Below are the deeds awarded to Nelly Ragland Watson and her children, William Watson and Elizabeth Fox.

Finally done with the legal battles that had consumed more than 20 years of her life, Nelly lived out the rest of her life as a landowner surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

From Ohio back to Kansas – building wealth

The land awarded to Elizabeth and Henry Fox enabled them to build wealth for their eventual move out west. The Foxes sold their Ohio land and used the proceeds to purchase their farm in Kansas. By the end of their lives, they owned a prosperous farm in Larned and had helped their children create comfortable lives to raise their own families.

The journey from Virginia slavery to Kansas independence was long and hard, but in the end my family triumphed. By 1914, when Aunt Dude came along, the Foxes were well established in their community, paving the way for the next generation to prosper.

In Memoriam

Aunt Dude lived nearly as long as Nelly. I like to think that her longevity was due to the strong genes she inherited from her intrepid great great grandmother.

When I asked my mom to share her favorites memories of Aunt Dude, her response made me imagine what Nelly and Elizabeth might also have been like:

“When I remember my Aunt Dude, I immediately see her kind, smiling face. If she were still here and wearing a mask, you would still know that she was smiling by her eyes.

I loved visiting her house as a child because it was always full of activity. How could it not be? She was the mother of seven children and had a busy husband and countless nieces, nephews and friends of her children coming and going! But no matter what, I always remember her voice being calm and filled with love. She always had a smile, a hug for me and a word of encouragement that was just for me, not for the world to hear.

Even later in life, when we had not seen each other for extended periods of time, whenever I saw her and my Aunt Glady—who was usually with her—I felt their love as strong as ever.

Jessica’s excavating of our family history has uncovered so many amazing facts that make family even more precious and endearing. As I read the article about my Aunt Melva accompanying her grandparents on an outing, it made me smile and made my connection to my family legacy even more poignant.”

Rest in peace to our sweet Aunt Dude. I know all the Foxes, Raglands, Watsons and Smiths were there at the gates of heaven to help you take your place amongst the ancestors.